1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing method for estimating an attribute of a target object, such as an existence position, orientation, and category including name and type, using a captured image of the target object. The target object is an arbitrary body, such as a person, an animal, a car, a camera, a printer, or a semiconductor substrate.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-323616 discusses a conventional object detection method referred to as a generalized Hough transform. The generalized Hough transform is a method for acquiring a position or an orientation of a target object to be detected, using a shape of a portion of the target object. More specifically, the position of a target object in an input image is acquired by detecting a portion of the target object included in the input image and performing voting on a reference position of the target object using the detection result.
However, according to the above-described conventional method, the object may be falsely detected, i.e., the object may be detected at a position where it does not actually exist. In particular, the object is falsely detected when there is a monotonous pattern such as a plurality of parallel lines in the input image. If an area of the parallel lines is input to the detection process, all results of detecting a portion of the target object become the same, so that the object is falsely detected. In other words, since the same position collects the votes when it is actually necessary for the votes to be directed to different positions, the target object is detected at a position where the object does not actually exist.